I did a Mother’s Day Post so I thought it only right to do a Father’s Day post as well — but b/c of the travel I’m running behind schedule. Besides that, Dad is in Germany and eating Fischbrotchen and who knows what other yummy things and not crying about his tardy Father’s Day Blog.
Item #1 – We had bring your daughters to work day awhile back and one of the partners brought his daughters in and everybody was coming up with copying and stapling jobs for them and my heart was really with these girls because what could possibly be more mind-numbing than an office all day long with people helpfully giving you copying to do like this is fun? (Aside: when I was a girl, we didn’t even have copy machines! We had those mimeograph things which is a great joke in Fast Times at Ridgemont High which I bet half the people don’t get any more.) Much as I sympathized, I was dying to take them aside and tell them what I had to do when I went to my Dad’s work when I was a kid.
We had to sort screws. This is not a joke. Dad had 10 pound coffee cans of screws and nails and whatever and we had to sort them. And this was not an approximate sort of job. If we mixed up the 5 and 3/10ths with the 5 and 1/2’s that was wrong. Welcome to mind-numbing.
Item #2 – When we were kids Dad had a pet Black Widow that we kept in a pickle jar. I want to say its name was Jackie but maybe it was Blackie. That makes more sense. We fed it flies that we shocked with a fly swatter. That spider lived FOR YEARS in our pantry in Agoura, California.
Item #3 – and this is the pay off item. When I graduated from college we had a group to Santa Barbara and this included Auntie Ivy (Grandma’s sister) and Uncle Al and I guess Grandma and the family. It’s all a bit dim by this time. After the graduation we went to the Santa Barbara Biltmore for brunch. And this was a 10 star brunch — I mean, you plotted very carefully what you were going to eat and how much and how fast because you wanted a bit of everything. They also served champagne which pretty much made the rest of the day a wash but that doesn’t figure into this story.
For some reason, with all this spread of incredible food, Aunt Ivy couldn’t find anything to make her happy. Also, it wasn’t cheap. I think it was like $45 in 19** dollars. We had a wonderful server who knocked herself out, carrying over the champagne bottle and taking care of us and trying to make Ivy happy. Ivy wanted fruit but the 3 giant serving trays and bowls of fruit that were set out for the guests were somehow not right. It was like it was cut into the wrong shapes. So our wonderful server went back to the kitchen and got Ivy a special plate of fruit cut into different shapes which still wasn’t right. (And I swear when I get old I’m going to be just like this and I can’t wait.)
When the whole thing was done we were all leaving — and here is where the great lesson from Dad comes in — I saw my Dad find the server and very discretely give her a $20 bill and thank her for her help.
You did good Dad, thanks for everything.
